Brighton diary

 Tonytown was supposed to run like clockwork with everything, including the spontaneity, scripted in advance. Take yesterday afternoon. A copy of the three-page running order details how TB, JP, NM, G (Tony Blair, John Prescott, Nelson Mandela and singer Gabrielle) plus chums choreographed as if in one of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's musicals. Stand up, sit down, enter stage left, exit stage left, get Pauline on, get Pauline off, enter Cherie, escort Cherie on, take Gabrielle on, take Gabrielle off (not forgetting her microphone), kids in T-shirts form up stage right, platform party goes into audience, T-shirt kids applaud platform party off, TB takes NM to lectern, etc, etc, etc. When Mandela failed to stand in a purple oval at 15.55 as instructed, a dark suited figure directed Blair and Prescott to move him two yards to the right. Even the world's greatest living statesman was treated as an extra in the new Labour extravaganza.

 Labour had Mandela this year, the Tories a rally for General Pinochet last year. Little more needs saying except the former ANC leader appears to have been keeping an eye on Tonytown. Earlier in the week a pensioner complained there were no OAPs on the top table. After his first standing ovation, Mandela, in his late seventies, quipped: "I know why you've come here. You're just curious. You want to see what a pensioner from the colonies looks like."

 The great man's presence was also used to ditch the traditional singing of The Red Flag to close the conference. Millbank claimed it had been missed in 1996 but some fear its absence in Labour's centenary year means Blair seized his chance to consign it to the dustbin of history. A recorded version of Let's Work Together, Tonytown's happy clappy theme tune, was instead played repeatedly.

 Tonytown's "Mr Big" evaded capture, the master criminal remaining at large after stealing the Family Planning Association's condom demonstrator. Another was sent down from London and the disrupted competition to find the fastest contraceptive fitter was won by a male delegate in an impressive three seconds. For some reason the FPA has decided not to re-run the contest at next week's gathering of the Blimps and blue rinse brigade along the south coast in Bournemouth. Willieville, not quite as big as Tonytown though it has pretensions, promises to be a far more sedate affair. Or perhaps not...